Tag Archives: geography

The ten most common place names in the country are, in descending order of frequency, Greenville (49), Franklin (30), Clinton (29), Springfield (28), Salem (25), Fairview (24), Washington (24), Madison (23), Georgetown (22), and Arlington (21). Hawaii is the only state without a Greenville. →

Christian Science Monitor: Way cleared for horse slaughter to resume in US after 5-year banCongress has passed a bill, and the president has signed it into law, that re-legalizes the slaughter of horses for human consumption. Banning that practice was a huge mistake, for reasons that were obvious at the time, but it took a five-year ban to show that to be so. Even PETA supports the change. The problem was that horses were either being abandoned to starve to death or shipped in crowded trailers to Canada or Mexico, where they were slaughtered (under terrible conditions in Mexico) and their meat sent back to the U.S. It actually increased animal suffering. Good for Congress for making a necessary—sure to be unpopular—change in the law.

Wikipedia: Point Roberts, WashingtonA tiny exclave of the United States is found off the coast of Washington State. "Point Bob," as it's known, is the southernmost tip of a Canadian peninsula, which extends just barely south of the 49th parallel that defines the U.S./Canadian border. To get there by land, one must go through two international border crossings. There are just over 600 households there, and one elementary school. After third grade, kids have to take a bus through Canada and back to the U.S. to get to school.

Wikipedia: Northwest AngleInsufficient understanding of North American geography in the late 1700s resulted in the Treaty of Paris accidentally assigning a notch of land in Canada to the United States. These 600 square miles comprise the "Northwest Angle" in Minnesota, the northernmost point in the continental U.S. To get there, one must fly, drive through Canada, or take a boat across the Lake of the Woods. 152 people live there.

Wikipedia: Ellis IslandThe waters around the Statue of Liberty are owned by New Jersey, but the land on which the statute sits is owned by New York. The adjacent Ellis Island is largely owned by New Jersey, which the Supreme Court ruled in 1998 has the right to all parts of the island that were created via infill after 1834. That leaves about 20% of the island (which I've been told includes the gift shop) in New York, and the remainder in New Jersey.

National Geographic: "Sea Monster" Fetus Found—Proof Plesiosaurs Had Live Young?Two plesiosaurs nested like Russian dolls seems like a pretty good indicator that they gave birth to live young, rather than laying eggs. There's good reason to think that other marine dinosaurs gave birth to live young, but usually to lots of little ones, while plesiosaurs would have given birth to human-like numbers of offspring, raising the possibility that they actively raised their young in a social sense.

The Guardian: Birmingham’s Muslims and Sikhs debate response to tragedyThree Middle Eastern men were killed in Birmingham this week, the victim of a hit-and-run as they stood guarding a gas station against roving English looters. This is the account of an impromptu meeting outside the same gas station, 24 hours later, of 300 Muslim and Sikh men. The unorganized bunch showed up expecting to march in protest, but after prayers, discussion, and votes, they collectively made a decision that probably surprised most of them.

Naval Company Inc. Line GunI have occasionally wondered how utility companies run lines across rivers, ravines, etc. Here's a video about one company's shoulder-mounted, black powder mini-cannon. That seems like a great toy.

MySQLTunerThis is a clever little program that examines your MySQL databases and makes recommendations about how to improve your database's performance in light of the reality of your data. I'll be spending some quality time with this on a few of my websites.

Wikipedia: Enclaved countriesThere are only three countries that are completely surrounded by another country: San Marino, Vatican City, and Lesotho.

Because I’m a big dork, when I encounter Virginia place names that I’m not familiar with, I like to look them up on Google Maps and see how many times I have to zoom out until I recognize what part of the state that the place is. Sometimes there’s a highway or a river that allows me to round it down to a particular chunk of Virginia. Sometimes there’s a park or another town nearby that I can place. But sometimes I’ve got to zoom out an awfully long way before I can find something familiar to grab onto. My progress in the Commonwealth Quest has been helpful in getting to know Virginia better, but I think it’d take a lifetime to learn every nook and cranny.

In English, when we want to describe something as incomprehensible, we might say “it’s all Greek to me.” From the always-excellent Strange Maps comes a diagram of what language people use in place of “Greek” depending in their native tongue. Romanians say “it’s all Turkish to me,” while Turks say “it’s all French to me,” who say “it’s all Hebrew to me,” who say “it’s all “it’s all Chinese to me,” who say “it’s all Heavenly Script to me.” The Greeks only come in second; most of the world is seemingly baffled by Chinese, though I suspect that owes more to centuries of Silk Road trade than anything else.